When the war started he was desperate to join up and see action before it was all over. When in August 1914 he discovered that there were already 500 applicants at the Point Cook Military Flying School and believing he had little chance of obtaining a entry without a long wait, he decided to sail for England at his own expense.

At a cost of £100 he qualified as a pilot and gained his pilot certificate on October 27 1915 at Hendon. He then immediately enlisted in the RNAS and three months later was commissioned as a probationary Flight Sub-Lieutenant at Eastchurch. He was only 20 at the time. By June he was at the Naval Air Station at Dunkirk fulfilling the function in France at this time by undertaking reconnaissance along the coast and making attacks on German installations in occupied Belgium. By Autumn 1916 however the RNAS was being drawn into the land battle further south and had the task of forming the personnel at Dunkirk into fighter squadrons to fight under RFC command.

Capt R A Little's Decorations. DSO and bar; DSC and bar; French Croix de Guerre and Star. At the bottom is his Scotch College Swimming medal.

Thus was born the famous 'Naval Eight' No 8 (Naval) Squadron - on 25 October with Fl Sub-Lt R A Little among its first pilots. He was assigned to "B" Flight under the command of another Australian ace, Stan Goble.

Under Squadron Commander G R Bromet they began with three flights of Nieuport 17s, Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutters and Sopwith Pups but by December it was the first all-Pup squadron in action. Little and his fellow naval pilots were delighted with the new aircraft.

On 11 November, Little made his first kill, an Aviatik C1, while flying a Pup N5182 although most people consider his first kill to have been on the 23rd when he shot down a two seater just north of La Bassee. and by December had claimed two Halberstadts.

On 1 February 1917 Naval Eight handed over its Pups to NO 3 (Naval) Squadron who took their place in the line with the RFC while Naval Eight's personnel went back to Dunkirk to reform with a more formidable fighting machine-the Sopwith Triplane. At the end of March the squadron flew south to Auchel, on the Third Army Front near Arras. Opposite them at Douai, once the home of Boelcke and Immelmann, was the HQ of Manfred von Richthofen's Albatros DIII-equipped,Jasta II. While the RFC squadrons with their obsolete equipment were being bloodily mauled, the naval Triplanes at least cowed the Jasta pilots and Little was by now a master of this highly maneuverable machine.  Flying with another great Australian naval triplane exponent, Fl Cdr C D Booker, he got a Jasta II Albatros over Lens on 7 April. On 24 April he attacked a DFW CV, put a bullet through its oil tank, and then followed its glide down to a field behind the Allied lines.

The German made a perfect landing but Little's triplane turned over on landing and the German pilot (who had been a Rhodes scholar at Oxford before the war) had to help his notional captor out of the upturned Sopwith, remarking it rather looks as if I shot you down, not me'.

In spite of this humiliation, Little's victory log lengthened throughout May. By the 26th it totalled twenty-eight and by the end of July he had destroyed thirty-seven enemy aircraft. The DSO and Bar to his DSC were gazetted on 11 August 1917 and the Bar to his DSO on 14 September 1917.

In the summer Of 1917 Little was recalled to RNAS Dover for instructional and administrative duties where he tried a new Sopwith Dolphin and a Spad. He could not stay out of the fighting for long, however, and was posted back to Naval Three, soon to become 203 Squadron RAF commanded by Raymond Collishaw.

His appetite for air fighting was insatiable. When not sharpening his eye on the airfield's rabbits with a .22 rifle, he would lead offensive patrols with scant regard for danger. On one occasion he attacked a particularly effective German Flak battery near La Bassee by flying in at 7000 feet, spiralling earthwards in a controlled 'falling leaf spin and finally flattening out at very near ground level to scatter the amazed gunners with machine-gun fire and then hedge-hop home.

On the day Richthofen was killed, 21 April 1918, Little flying a Sopwith Camel picked off the rear-most aircraft in a formation of twelve from Jasta Boelcke. Six avengers turned angrily on Little's Camel and shot his controls away. The aircraft went down to within 100 feet of the ground before flattening out with a jerk. Little, having unstrapped his seat belt against standing orders, was thrown clear as the Camel ploughed into the ground north of the Forest of Nieppe. Two enemy aircraft followed him down to rake the wreck with fire, but Little was out and still fighting, blazing away with his Webley until some British infantry joined in with Lewis guns.

On 28 May Major Booker, Little's comrade from Naval Eight and now Commanding Officer 201 Squadron RAF, was summoned to the scene of a crash where a Camel had come down in the French lines. He got a terrible shock - the pilot still at the controls with a bullet through his heart was Little. The previous evening Little had taken off in Camel B6318 in an attempt to intercept German Gotha bombers making a night raid. It seems that he was killed by one of the Gothas' defensive gunners, while blinded by a searchlight beam, and crashed.

Left: Robert Alexander Little's wife shortly after they were married.